• Kevin
• OK/Cancel
• Yahoo
• Comics
• Canada
• Skiing

and then ran out of space. During the course of the night I had one person come up and just start talking to me about Canada because he was also Canadian. Another felt compelled to come talk to me because he was a fan of comics. All this at the geeky design party with the digerati. No, “so what do you do?” or “what company do you work for?” or “did you see that latest thing on TechCrunch?”. I got to meet the _people_.

Refreshing.

So with conference season here. Please, at TED, eTech, SxSW, IASummit, CHI, NetSquared, etc, etc …

Tag Yourself

Over the past few years, I have become more and more accustomed to the conference scene. As OK/Cancel has gained notoriety, I’ve also had less and less trouble breaking the ice with people. That’s because the conferences I went to were always the same demographic – designers and web geeks. On one hand, these conferences are great because you can bypass things like “what’s tagging?” and go straight into discussions that explore new domains. On the other hand, it’s easy to slip into a comfort zone because you end up knowing at least half the people at the conference.

I bring up the design conferences because I found an interesting parallel to TED. The first year I went to SxSW Interactive, I felt like an outsider. I perceived a lot of cliques amongst “A-List” bloggers (as Tycho says, there’s apparently “a list” and who maintains it is a mystery). Luckily, because we were there for the web awards, and we had some trading cards to build buzz, meeting people was made easier. The next year, a SxSWi virgin I met was expressing similar sentiments that I had. By this time, I was friends with a lot of these people and realized that it wasn’t about cliques at all. These are friends for whom this is the only time in the year they see each other – of course they’re going to seek and hang out with each other. SxSWi people are actually extremely open to meeting new people but sometimes, they’re busy catching up with old friends and need the newcomers to come and say hi (remember to say hi this weekend by the way).

Which brings me back to TED. Coming to this conference, I had a sense that I would be out of my element again. The audience and presenters were a whole other caliber and their accomplishments vast. Attendees included founders of major companies, cultural icons, inventors making the future now, scientists, musicians and of course, a former Vice Presidents. Also, TED is limited to approximately a thousand attendees via invitations (and a hefty registration fee). The assumption then, is that almost everyone there is worth talking to. Time however, is still limited and I still catch myself and others doing the “badge glance”.

Badge Glance v. To quickly scan a passer-by’s conference badge and ascertain the following in sequence:
“Do I personally know this person?”
“No? Is the person famous?”
“No? Am I interested in the company this person represents?”
This act is usually performed in seconds and can be subtle or overt depending on whether the badge glancer cares about the badge owner’s feelings.

Moreover, like SxSWi, many TED attendees are returning from previous years and thus, a reunion aspect of the conference similar to SxSWi exists. The combination of TED’s character with these pre-existing social circles made for an even more challenging environment for myself and some other TED virgins I met. Just like SxSWi, it’s not that people don’t want to meet you, it’s just hard to break that ice and there’s only so much time is limited.

TED Friend

At the beach party on the last day, I had an interesting conversation with Jacques Vroom where I brought up the intimidation factor as a TED virgin. My feeling was, “the accomplishments of most of these people is mind boggling, what do I even say?” He gave an interesting counter perspective, “that guy’s a young professional at Yahoo!, he’s probably going to talk a million miles an hour about things I don’t understand.” So I guess intimidation can work both ways and both are probably less valid than they seem. So we talked about the idea of a mentor program for conference virgins. For the sake of argument, let’s call it TED Friend. Each TED virgin is assigned a volunteer return attendee (their TED Friend). Right off the bat, you’ve improved by having someone to lunch with on the first day. Furthermore, the returning attendee can introduce you to the circle of people he/she knows throughout the course of the conference. No formal responsibility is assigned – this isn’t babysitting, it’s helping break the ice.

I’m fairly certain such a loose but slightly formalized system would work. If this was instigated at SxSW, I would gladly introduce my SxSW Friend to the many great people I’ve met and invite them to all the events I plan on attending. Further, the system could be tiered such that a second year attendee (TED Sophomore?) could have a TED Friend of their own.

I know I could still use one next year.

Dynamo, a street magician from UK was performing and presenting at TED2006. On the following night, at the Aquariem Party, he was performing to small groups. Someone mentioned that he may be using a trick deck. As it so happens, I carry a deck of cards with my laptop bag at all times and as it so happens, that deck is a purple Yahoo! deck.

He started by asking my to choose a card from my deck and place it at the top without looking. He did the same with his deck. We then swapped decks. “I made a prediction, yeh, of what card you picked, yeh,” he said and then asked me to flip over the top card of what was his deck. A four of spades. He flips over the top card on the deck of Yahoo! cards he had never touched until then and sure enough – four of spades. I also managed to get some pics and vids of him performing.

Day two of TED conference (where I’m uploading pictures as soon and often as I can). This conference was meant to be the change of pace from the many design conferences I tend to go to. TED stands for Technology Entertainmend Design and has just an incredible speaker lineup (which I really can’t do justice). The idea of going to this was to branch out a bit and take away from these conferences, to bring the experience back to what I do: comics and design. Some highlights from the last couple of days before I forget everything I’m seeing.

• Hans Rosling presents visualizations found at gapminder.org illustrating the effects of number of children
• Richard Baraniuk and his open source learning through Connexions. Create, Rip, Mix, Burn.
• Video of a bypass surgery involving regenerative tissue – where all I can think of is how the surgeon is holding a beating heart in his hand (except this isn’t a movie like Temple of Doom)
• Penelope Boston postulates up to 50% chance that there can be life on Mars
• Pastor Rick Warren speaks on his book “A Purposeful Life” immediately followed by atheist Dan Dennett
• Michael Shermer of Skeptics society and a whole lotta debunking
• Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop – a laptop per child and a mock of it
• Al Gore’s global warming presentation and imagery
• The TED prize winners and their wishes, which I’m sure will be on the website shortly
• I’m sure I’m forgetting a whole ton of stuff …

I’m usually pretty comfortable in design conferences, especially now with OK/Cancel, there’s an easy ice breaker for meeting people. Here, it’s been somewhat more daunting because every name tag that I’ve read says Principal, CEO, VP, and such. In principal, I understand there is no difference, they are people who are here to meet and greet and be inspired by people from different disciplines as well but it’s always one thing to be rational and another when it comes to action. Matt Groening walks by, Sergey Brin passes me half a dozen times, there’s Al Gore, there’s Tim Brown, CEO od IDEO, and hey is that Peter Gabriel?